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Nurses' Experience Key to Better Patient Care, Study Says

Nurses' Experience Key to Better Patient Care, Study Says

FRIDAY, April 18, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Patients may get the best care when treated in hospital units staffed by highly experienced nurses, a new study shows.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 900,000 patients admitted over four years to U.S. Veterans Administration hospitals and found that for each one-year increase in the average tenure of registered nurses in a hospital unit, patients spent 1.3 percent less time in the hospital.

A shorter hospital stay indicates that a patient received better care, and is also more cost-effective, according to the researchers from Columbia University in New York City.

They also found that patients' length of stay increased when a team of RNs (registered nurses) had to do without an experienced member or had a new member assigned to them.

The study appears in the current issue of American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

"Reducing length of stay is the holy grail of hospital management because it means patients are getting higher quality, more cost-effective care," senior study author Patricia Stone, a professor of health policy at Columbia's School of Nursing, said in a university news release.

"When the same team of nurses works together over the years, the nurses develop a rhythm and routines that lead to more efficient care," Stone said. "Hospitals need to keep this in mind when making staffing decisions -- disrupting the balance of a team can make quality go down and costs go up."

The findings show that hospital chief executives should consider policies to retain the most experienced nurses and create a work environment that encourages nurses to remain in their current units, study co-author Ann Bartel, a professor of workforce transformation at Columbia Business School, said in the news release.